WEBVTT - From the Vault: Mystery Cults, Part 1 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:09.360 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:13.800 is Robert Lamb. This is a winter break week for us, 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.759 so we have some vault episodes for you. This is 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:20.599 going to be part one of our Mystery Cults series 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.160 from last year, Part one of four. It originally published 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.640 two twenty seven, twenty twenty five. What is it about, Well, 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.440 it is a mystery we'll have to experience for yourself. 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:36.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:44.640 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:45.640 name is Robert. 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:47.480 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.120 Now many times on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. When 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.920 discussing religion and the ancient Greco Roman world, we have 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.840 referred to the mystery cults, also known as the sacred 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:05.679 mysteries or even the mysteries. Watching my stories, we've discussed 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:09.559 specific mystery cults and a little more depth. But I 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.319 was recently thinking about this and I realized that this 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:16.320 was a topic that deserved deeper consideration, and indeed, I 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.520 think more than once I've personally kind of left it 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.560 at and this deity was also taken up by the 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.480 mystery cults as if to delve deeper is impossible or 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:33.200 somehow forbidden. Now, certainly mysteries surrounding the various mystery cults 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:36.319 remain and much as left open to interpretation, but we 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:38.759 do know quite a lot whole books have been written 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:41.720 on the topic, and we're going to follow along in 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.160 these episodes to see what we can learn and share 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:45.679 about the mysteries. 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.320 Well, Rob, I am excited to go on a journey 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.680 exploring the mystery cults of the Greco Roman world, But 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.160 I kind of like the way that you used to 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.440 leave it off, you know, just you know, in this 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.800 deity Yes became a focus of the mystery cults and 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.000 saying no more, because that is a tradition going all 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:05.680 the way back to the ancient world itself. One of 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.280 the main sources we're going to be using in this 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:12.160 series is a great book called Mystery Cults in the 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.959 Ancient World. They just got a new edition out. I 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:17.560 think it was originally published over a decade ago, but 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:19.919 it got a new edition in twenty twenty three by 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:22.680 an author named Hugh Bowden, who is a professor of 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:26.040 ancient history at King's College, London. This is a really 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.280 great book. But one of the things you mentioned several 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:33.480 times is ancient writers bringing up a mystery cult and 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.200 then saying I've been instructed in a dream not to 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:40.000 say any more about this. My lips are sealed, like 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.560 Paulsenius will be like, then, this really interesting thing happened 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.480 in Samothrace, of which I can tell you nothing, which 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:49.720 itself makes for a very enticing subject. 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:54.120 Yeah, and and course runs completely counter to our modern 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:59.040 understanding of history, like now everything must be revealed, Please 0:02:59.080 --> 0:02:59.919 reveal it to us. 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:03.360 Yeah, everything, except when you have met face to face 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.639 the terrifying power of a god or a goddess. Now, Rob, 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.760 I know today you wanted wanted to do some work 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:15.080 laying the groundwork establishing a bit about the historical context 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:19.519 of broader Greco Roman religion in the ancient Mediterranean world, 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.280 which is the context in which these mystery cults existed. 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.040 But before we do that, I thought it might be 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:30.000 important just to do a little bit of disambiguation on terminology, 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:35.640 because if you are coming into an episode called mystery cults, 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.400 and you are bringing the normal connotations of the word 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.160 mystery and cult that modern English speakers would bring with you, 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:46.760 that might send your mind off in several different wrong 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:47.840 directions at once. 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.320 That's right. If you were to tell someone I just 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.320 joined a mystery cult today, you might be it might 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:58.320 be accurate to think, oh, this individual joined a book club, 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.760 or maybe this is a really cool band name. And 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.520 if someone were to join a mystery cult, say in 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:10.800 the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties, in say the United States, 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:13.600 well it's going to have different connotations and it might 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:15.280 read to a certain it might lead to a certain 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:20.120 amount of panic. But yeah, we have to differentiate a 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.600 mystery cult in its ancient application. 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.360 Here, right, So we need to do work on both 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.560 of those words, actually, on mystery and on cult. So 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:33.120 in modern English, the word cult is typically used to 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:38.480 mean a specific type of religious phenomenon, almost always with 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:44.880 pejorative connotations. So a cult refers to a marginal, extreme 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.880 and usually socially harmful form of religion from the point 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:52.360 of view of the person choosing this term. So, for example, 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.279 a cult is a religion that has relatively few adherents 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:00.599 compared to major world religions. Maybe one that enforces strict 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:05.440 reverence and obedience of a human leader. Maybe a religion 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.760 that requires adherents to cut off contact with loved ones. 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.120 And the rest of the outside world things like that. 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:16.080 Yes. Indeed, the word cult has often been used by 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:22.920 more established religious groups against new religious movements, new religious 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.880 movements that could potentially have harmful attributes but may not. 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:30.719 This was a hallmark, of course, of the Christian countercult 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.239 movement of the late twentieth century, often targeting Christian groups 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:39.799 held as heretical by larger Christian organizations, which of course 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.120 is a tail almost as old as Christianity itself in 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:44.080 many respects. 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.920 And in some cases what the Christians were saying about 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.960 those people probably resembled what the Roman Pagans were saying 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.280 about the early Christians. They meet in secret, and they 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:55.239 eat babies alive and stuff. 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.839 Yeah, And of course all this bleeds over to into 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:02.240 fiction and fantasy. You know, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:05.479 you have probably noticed that I haven't checked in the 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.440 new Monster Manual which just came out. I have a 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:10.479 copy of it, but I haven't gotten to the cultists yet. 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:15.120 But generally, cultists are an enemy type in Dungeons and Dragons. 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.360 And what do you think of in Dungeons and Dragons. 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:19.440 Within the context of Dungeons and Dragons when you encounter 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.120 a cultist, well, they are just absolute bad guys with 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:27.520 no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They're just they're villains that you battle. 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:30.680 They see that another fantasy fiction as well. 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:33.960 Usually their own proprietary robes and daggers if you loot them. 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:37.440 Yes, yes, yeah. If you get a mini of a cultist, 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:39.719 what do you expect to see? A robe and a dagger. 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:40.200 Those are the. 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.480 Hallmarks, right, So that's what cult usually means in English 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:45.800 today in general usage. And then of course you get 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:48.719 the derivative term, you know, like cult films and stuff 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:53.279 that are more ironic usages stemming from that usage. Yeah, 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:56.640 But in the context of Greco Roman history, the word 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.679 cult does not have any of those connotations. It doesn't 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:04.480 have any negative implications. It does not imply a marginal 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:09.600 or unusual practice either. There were cults of the mainstream 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.200 gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, so you'd have 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:16.280 the local cult of Apollo, the local cult of Jupiter, 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:20.520 the cult of Dionysus, et cetera. So when used by 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.400 ancient historians, you can think of the word cult as 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.240 basically just a synonym for the word worship or system 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.680 of worship. So the cult of Apollo in a particular 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.480 time and place in the Hellenic world would be the 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:37.679 system of beliefs, practices, and social structures under which Apollo 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.720 was worshiped. In fact, there's a bit of interesting etymology here. 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:47.120 The English word cult is derived through several steps, originally 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:51.120 from the Latin cultus, which often literally means worship, but 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:55.440 also means care in the sense of taking care of 0:07:55.720 --> 0:08:00.000 something or tending to the needs of something. So, for example, 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:05.200 agriculture is tending to the needs of the fields. To 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:09.200 cultivate means to till a field and preparation for planting. 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.040 So the cult of a particular god is the way 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:16.440 of tending to the needs of that God in the 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:21.480 form of worship, prayer, festivals, rituals, and sacrifices, the latter 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.320 of which could take many forms, often agricultural products like 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.560 grain or the meat of livestock, or could have other forms, 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.600 you know, maybe a monetary donation purchasing one of the 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.760 aforementioned products, or things like incense or wine. 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.000 So when we think of something like the cult of Cthulhu, 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.280 we're just talking about taking care of Cthulhu. Yes, looking 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:47.000 after Cthulhu, tending to the needs of Cthulhu, which sounds 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:48.480 far less frightening and threatening. 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.600 That's true, it's a beautiful thing. And in fact, this 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:56.720 highlights something about Greek and Roman pagan religion that is 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:01.520 unfamiliar to practitioners of many the major world religions today, 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:05.480 people who are primarily familiar with religion through you know, 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:10.760 Christianity or Islam or Judaism. The most common form of 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:15.080 public religion in the Greek and Roman world was essentially 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:22.640 a transactional quid pro quo relationship between the person or 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.600 the local community and a god. So the person and 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:32.640 the community at large performed rituals and sacrifices in honor 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:36.600 of the God, and in return, the God was expected 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.920 to provide blessings to the person. So it was generally 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.240 understood that, you know, the gods would have power over 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:46.880 events that were beyond human control. They can maybe control how, 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:53.520 you know, the weather and agricultural outcomes and diseases and 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.240 things like that, and so in order to get the 0:09:56.280 --> 0:09:59.000 God to you know, treat you nice as far as 0:09:59.040 --> 0:10:01.800 those things beyond you and control wind, the thing you 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:04.320 would do is take care of the God. You would 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.480 honor their festivals, you would make sacrifices to them, you 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:10.280 would do prayers for them, And in that sense, you 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:12.400 can really look at it as kind of a contract. 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:15.080 There's a bargain. We do things for you, you do things 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:15.520 for us. 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:21.600 Yeah, I think the agriculture comparison is quite apt here 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.439 to think of it almost as like a knowledge of 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:29.680 the unseen world that then you of course have to honor. Like, okay, 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:34.160 we've discovered this. We are aware of this relationship between 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.000 these entities we cannot see, but who are quite powerful 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.559 over human affairs, and of course we have to cultivate 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.200 this relationship. We have to make sure that they're happy 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.280 so we can be happy. This is how the world. 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:50.240 Works, right, and this is the main way religion is 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:54.280 understood among the ancient Greeks and Romans. That way of 0:10:54.320 --> 0:11:00.240 approaching religion is fundamentally different from the major religion of 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:05.360 the world today, like Christianity and Islam, which place emphasis 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:10.760 on belief and on a form of mental submission to God. 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.880 Mainstream Greek and Roman religion was really there was not 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:18.760 a lot of discourse about what you believed or like, 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:24.120 you know, did you mentally internally honor and love God? 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.480 That that was just not really a common way of 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:29.360 approaching it for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Instead, it 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.200 was did you do the rituals, did you do the prayers? 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.200 Did you make the sacrifices, did you celebrate the festivals? 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.880 Yeah? Yeah? Do you know what the gods want? And 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:41.719 generally what the gods want are those rituals, are those 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:45.000 sacrifices and so forth. It's more transactional. 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.760 I was thinking about another difference that came to mind 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.120 for me as I was reading this Abouden book that 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:53.320 we're going to be talking about in the series. I 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.440 can really only speak to my intimate familiarity with Christianity 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:00.040 here in America today. But I think a lot of 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.760 modern Christians, at least in the United States, would today 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:09.920 say that God does not need our worship, like he 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:14.160 is not left wanting if deprived of it. Rather, I 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:18.240 think most would say that say something like, we worship 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.760 God because it is right to do so, that God 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:25.560 is by nature deserving of worship, and so we his 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:30.720 followers are simply acknowledging that. I don't get that impression 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.400 about Greco Roman pagans. I don't get the feeling they 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:37.200 would have thought of it this way, the worship and 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:40.960 sacrifices that Greco Roman pagans seem to have given the 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:45.240 gods were things that the gods wanted and in fact needed. 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:48.960 And one piece of evidence for this occurred to me 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:53.360 when I was reading Bowden's recounting of the myth of 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:57.120 Demeter and Persephone, in which Persephone has stolen a way 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.800 to the underworld, Demeter is left distraw looking for her. 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:04.240 Eventually she can return back to the upper world for 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:05.920 part of the year, but it has to return to 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:08.440 the underworld for another part of the year, and this 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:13.600 ends up relating to understandings of seasonal cycles. But anyway, 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.760 this myth is related to one of the most important 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:23.760 mystery cults in the ancient Mediterranean, the Elusinian Mysteries. More 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:25.920 on that later, but there is a part of the 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.520 myth where Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertile fields and 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.440 the harvest, is mourning the kidnapping of her daughter into 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.880 the underworld, and she uses her power over the fields 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:39.800 to stop grain from growing over the earth. And it 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.240 turns out, at least within a common telling of this tale, 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:47.160 in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, this is alarming not 0:13:47.360 --> 0:13:50.080 only to humans who need to eat the grain. You know, 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:52.880 that's going to cause famine on earth, but it's also 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.440 alarming to the gods, because the gods need to receive 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:01.320 grain sacrifices from humans, and so Zeus is motivated to 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.080 do something to fix the situation. And that struck me 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.920 as very alien to the most common ways of thinking 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.000 about God that I encounter, at least as the you know, 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:15.080 twenty first century American. It seems to me that that 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:18.800 to the Greco Roman pagans, not only was the worship 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.760 of the god's transactional. The gods were not just taking 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.840 pity on us or doing us a favor by engaging 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:27.920 in this deal making. They needed, or at least very 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.320 much wanted, what we were bringing to the table. 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:34.160 Yes, yes, very different from the idea of well, God 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:37.840 created you, God wants your love, and you are loved 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.640 by God and therefore like invited into his arms. No, 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.400 this is more we need that grain, like there's a 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.160 there's an economy here and it needs to be maintained. 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.160 Yeah, that's right. So anyway, I guess we got into 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.200 some digressions there. But that's why the word cult should 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:56.040 not mislead you there. We're not talking about the you know, 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:59.480 the the cultists of dungeons and dragons. It just means 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:13.960 a form of wor worship as understood within the ancient Mediterranean. Now, 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.080 the other word in a mystery cult is mystery. This 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.240 is an interesting case too. In common usage today, mystery 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.960 refers to a sort of puzzle with a hidden solution. 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.440 So a mystery story is one where the plot is 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:33.320 propelled by your desire to have a question answered. There 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.800 may be a there may be a hidden solution, or 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.120 there may be no known solution at all. Sometimes a 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.000 mystery refers to a thing that a question that cannot 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:47.800 be answered. Russies yes, So this could imply that a 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:50.960 mystery cult is a form of worship where the main 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:56.240 goal is to solve some kind of information puzzle, to 0:15:56.400 --> 0:16:00.040 answer a question, or to access a piece of hidden in. 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:05.040 That's not primarily what's going on with mystery cults. While 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.160 the Greco Roman mystery cults absolutely did have elements of 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:12.000 secrecy and privileged information, and we'll get into more of 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:14.720 that later as well, the main sense in which the 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:18.560 word mystery is used in mystery cults is to refer 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:22.160 not to an information puzzle, but to a specific type 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:29.200 of secret initiation ritual known in Greek as mysteria, which 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:34.120 somewhat overlaps with other Greek concepts of orgea and teleti. 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:38.560 A Bowden mentions these three concepts altogether. They seem to 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:41.840 sometimes be used interchangeably, or maybe to refer to related 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:46.000 but slightly different things orgea and teleti. He translates as 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:51.160 mystic rites and initiations. So what are the mysteries? The 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:55.440 mysteries are these initiation rites, and they could indeed be 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:59.120 described as in many ways mysterious. They were often held 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.560 at night, They were often conducted in secret, so they 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:06.600 might take place inside a kind of a protected building 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.639 outside of public view. So in the case of the 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:12.760 Elusinian mysteries, which we'll describe in more detail later, I'm 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.960 sure there would be a kind of publicly viewable part 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.840 of this festival that would take place outside people would 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.400 be able to see it going on, But eventually the 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:28.680 festival would progress into an enclosed area inside a kind 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.679 of temple complex, where things would happen inside and those 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.040 not initiated into the secret rights would not be able 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.880 to know what was going on. Sometimes these rights would 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.879 also be mysterious in the sense that participants might be 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:46.120 blindfolded or hooded so that they couldn't see or understand 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.040 what was happening. And the rights were often just made 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:57.880 up of weird, baffling, frightening, emotionally intense experiences and encounters 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.720 with the power of the gods. So there are absolutely 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:06.240 things about these rights that we might think of as mysterious, 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:10.160 and the mystery cults did absolutely have secrets. But the 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:14.240 mystery in the name refers to these rights, refers to 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:18.480 the strange, powerful, obscure rights of initiation, not so much 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:22.359 to an information puzzle mystery in the Sherlock Holmes sense. 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:25.040 If that distinction makes sense. 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:29.200 Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now I want to add an additional 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:32.879 note on the term that you mentioned already, orgia. This 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.080 term is of course used in the context of religious 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:39.800 rights in ancient Greece, and while orgia might entail sexuality, 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:44.600 it does not inherently entail sexuality. I was reading a 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.720 bit about this in a really nice twenty twenty three 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:53.480 piece in The Conversation by Christian George Schwinzel. This is 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:58.320 a historian, a French historian of the ancient world, and 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:00.439 he writes about this, and he points out that the 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:06.520 term that we in common usage today org orgy in English, 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.520 didn't come to mean group sexual activity and excessive food 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:15.000 and drink till after eighteen hundred CE, especially during the 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:21.240 nineteenth century, and especially in French literature of the time. Schwinzel, however, 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:23.879 stresses that this doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks and 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:28.280 Romans didn't engage in such activities. They certainly did, they 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:32.240 just referred to them by different names. Schwenzel, who is 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:35.520 again himself French, wrote an entire book on the subject. 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:38.199 It's funny how this is one of these terms that 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:40.359 has come around kind of like cult in a way, 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.320 where I use the word orgy all the time, not 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.840 to refer to anything sexual. I just mean like a 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:52.040 sort of an excessive indulgence in something. 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.800 Right right well, And in fact, he gets into this 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.480 a little bit like bringing up the film Babylon for 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.879 the kind of thing came out that same year, which 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.040 is like a Hollywood Babylon sort of thing, and he 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:06.679 points out that some of the that the movie does 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:11.480 contain a fictional depiction of a Hollywood orgy in the 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.680 in the modern sense, but then one might say, well, 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:17.480 this movie is an orgy for the senses in the 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.359 metaphorical sense. But again, when you get back to the 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.560 use of the of the term or gea, it does 0:20:23.600 --> 0:20:27.959 not necessarily mean any kind of sexual activity was going on. 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:32.800 It could, but it doesn't inherently mean that. So it's 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:36.520 just another important footnote about the usage of the usages 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.920 of the term. The French literature example, you do see 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:44.560 works of that in Daring that time period that are 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.840 portraying the ancient world as engaging in these sorts of 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.600 rights that putting more of a you know, an erotic 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:54.120 sexual spin on the right. 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:56.520 So that's kind of an adaptation. But even in the 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.399 original Greek understanding that we were just talking about, as 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:03.920 explained by Bowden, there is the idea that the orgea 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:09.240 or orgea, these mystic rights would have been probably extremely 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:14.000 emotionally intense and overwhelming to the senses. Ancient writers who 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.680 do even if they don't describe what the rights themselves were, 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:20.560 they often describe the effect of them, which is that 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:24.880 they are life changing, an overwhelming experience that leaves one 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:26.440 deeply shaken to the core. 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:32.240 Exactly Now, again, that book by Hugh Bowden has been 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:36.080 one of our key resources here, and Bowden does a 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.359 great job as a great approach to the topic, grounding 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:42.640 his initial approach in a discussion of what we might 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.080 refer to as this the mainstream religious ecosystem of the 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.159 ancient Greco Roman world, and then diving into where the 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:52.600 mystery cults fit in and how they generally differed. And 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.399 we've already been engaging with some of this. You know, 0:21:55.640 --> 0:22:01.120 we have to exit our modern understanding of organized, top 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:05.399 down religion and get into a different ecosystem, a different 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.920 way that things worked in order to understand then how 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.600 the mystery cults are sort of set aside even from that, 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.880 So we're we're largely dealing with the world before Christianity 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:20.040 and set apart from its key characteristics, namely, you know, 0:22:20.080 --> 0:22:26.040 any notion of a centrally organized doctrinal religion. So first up, 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:30.080 this is this probably seems like an outrageous overstatement of 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.000 the obvious, but there were a lot of gods, yes, 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:35.560 and by that we don't just mean the standard twelve 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.119 Olympians set menu that instantly comes to mind. You know, 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.679 you know your your Zeus, your Apollo, and so forth. 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:45.000 You know your your main Greek gods, the ones that 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:46.720 you're going to see in a poster. They're the ones 0:22:46.760 --> 0:22:52.480 that are frequently utilized in Greek mythology themed works of fiction. No, 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.640 I would say, instead, think of an exhaustive cheesecake factory 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:00.439 style menu, one that makes you question whether the kitchen 0:23:00.480 --> 0:23:03.600 can truly deliver on all of these diverse menu items. 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:06.560 Only even that is not a perfect technology, because the 0:23:06.640 --> 0:23:10.320 cheesecake factory is, as I understand it, centrally organized. The 0:23:10.359 --> 0:23:12.679 idea is that any cheesecake factory you go to is 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:15.400 going to have the same exhaustive menu, right. 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:18.720 Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to think of a better analogy, 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:21.080 because so you had lots of different gods, and then 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:26.439 you had local versions of all these gods, so almost 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:30.240 more like how you got McDonald's. But the local McDonald's 0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:34.000 is a franchise, you know. But that's a little misleading too, 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.800 because there's top down control like McDonald's corporates, that's rules 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:41.320 about what franchise owners can do. So, I don't know. 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:45.560 You imagine you've got your basic list of gods, then 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:48.480 you've got a lot of other lesser known gods, and 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:52.160 then you've also got the local ways or the local 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:55.199 cult of each of the main gods that are going 0:23:55.280 --> 0:23:58.040 to be different than how that god is appreciated and 0:23:58.119 --> 0:23:59.520 understood in a different place. 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:02.760 Right, Yeah, any given community or city states, city state 0:24:02.880 --> 0:24:04.960 is going to have its own caste of deities. They 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:09.040 determine the course of people's lives. Individual cult practices are 0:24:09.119 --> 0:24:13.840 going to vary widely across the inherently fractured populations, a 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:17.640 variety that was at times due to actual independence, such 0:24:17.640 --> 0:24:20.040 as in the post Alexander period where you had a 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:25.480 very formerly united and now fractured empire, or during Roman rule, 0:24:25.520 --> 0:24:31.119 where you know, everything is is wrapped up under Roman rule, 0:24:31.560 --> 0:24:35.280 but with local religious customs largely left alone. As long 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:37.800 as they're not interfering with what the Romans are doing, fine, 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:41.119 go ahead and do whatever you were doing beforehand. So 0:24:41.480 --> 0:24:43.640